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00:01:
Ted Audio Collective
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It's Ted Talks Daily, I'm Elise Hugh.
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You're in for a treat and a lot of laughing out loud in today's dog from Pop Culture
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Queen, Bevy Smith.
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She took the Ted 2022 stage in five-inch heels and a whole lot of moxie.
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She shares where it all came from and her key lessons about aging in her singular,
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Heavy Smith style.
00:34:
Got a business problem?
00:35:
There's a TED Talk for that.
00:37:
Stay updated on everything business.
00:39:
On TED Business, a podcast hosted by Columbia Business School Professor Modoupe Akanola.
00:44:
Every week, she'll introduce you to leaders with unique insights on work, answering questions
00:49:
like, how do four day work weeks work?
00:52:
Do will a machine ever take my job?
00:54:
some surprising answers on Ted Business, wherever you listen to podcasts.
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I am a late bloomer. In fact, a friend of mine you may have heard of, Chris Rock.
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He once called me the most late bloomin mofo he'd ever met.
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Now some people might consider that snide, but I've revel in it. I'm 55,
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and I'm here in this curvy body as someone who has done the work,
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lived the life, walked the walk and these are very high heels and therefore is
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qualified to testify in a church and in the court of law that it does in fact get greater later.
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Now coming to this realization wasn't easy. At the age of 38 I was a very successful fashion advertising executive.
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And I was really living what most people considered a dream life.
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I was jet-set in the fashion shows.
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I was receiving free designer clothes.
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I was double kissing my way across the globe.
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Who was?
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And you know, it was everything that I ever wanted it to be.
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And then one day I realized I was only pretending to be happy.
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But I couldn't blow up my good life
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In my prime earning years, right?
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Wrong.
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Which leads me to lessons my mother Lollie taught me.
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Lollie's number one lesson, don't settle.
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Don't settle.
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Now I'm aware that my well-paying glamorous career
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is not exactly the hum drum I hate my job stereotype that most people equate with settling,
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but it was a settle for me.
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Because when I actually did quit my job at the age of 38,
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It was with the intention that every day be a great adventure.
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Now sometimes it was a very scary adventure
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like being broke from the age of 40 to 45.
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But even still, I wouldn't trade up
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with a safe and settled version because if I had,
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I would not be here with y'all today.
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Yeah.
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So you know how when you like buck the system and go against the status quo, it makes people really uncomfortable.
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And invariably, people will ask, where do you get your confidence?
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Now, some people mean it as a compliment, but very often, it's shady.
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And it's a silent judgment.
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And to those people, I respond with a quote
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from this Brooklyn poet you may have heard of.
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Jay-Z, she get it from her mama.
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I am she and my mama is the epitome of a grown-ass woman,
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someone who has always been very comfortable in her skin.
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In 1965, my mom was 37 years old.
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She already had one child, my big brother Jerry,
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as she married my dad, but she kept her maiden name.
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And then she had my sister Stephanie and I back to back,
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but she continued to work because she refused
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to be beholden to my dad for money.
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And I bet my mom was the only woman in our neighborhood who cooked once a week.
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She made Sunday dinner.
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It was an extravaganza, but that's all she did.
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She cooked one day a week.
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My mom is just amazing.
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And she also had this ability of talking to her children
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about real life and making sure that we understood
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the virtues of going your own way,
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which is why I believe today at the age of 94
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In a recent widow, my mom is still carving out ways
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to find and determine and define her own version of happiness.
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She cooks for herself.
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She maintains her home exactly as she sees fit.
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She enjoys champagne and all-rated films.
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LAUGHTER
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My mom has managed to maintain her glam or her sex appeal, you know, her independence.
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And I really hope some of that rubs off on me.
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Recently, I've been thinking about
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one of the best lessons that my mom ever taught me,
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which is the literal beauty in aging.
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Now we all know that black don't crack, right?
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Right?
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Okay.
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Black don't crack.
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So at the age of 50, my mom could have easily passed for the age of 35.
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And that's back during the time
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when women were really queried about the age, a lady never tells her age.
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My mom never subscribed to that.
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She was always proud of her age.
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As a matter of fact, she believes you may not tell your age,
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but your hands and your neck will.
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So make peace with aging
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or prepare for an entire wardrobe of gloves and turd the next.
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Yeah, my mom has always done these wonderful things like that.
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But I wish she could rub off on everyone because I feel like now I'm looking at even
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20 somethings who have a fear of aging.
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I watch them on social media, like, you know, compulsively practicing the latest 10-second dance craze.
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And it feels like they're angst and asking, is that all there is?
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And I just want to yell.
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Yes, that is all there is.
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before you're gonna do a salule for dancing to someone else's TikTok beat. ardling is a very insidious.
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It keeps us dancing on this string, waiting for this elusive better date and miraculously appear.
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Now thanks to Lobley's two-dolage, that's not my story.
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In fact, I take each day as it comes
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by trying to make it better than the last.
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So, you know, I'm single, but I'm always ready to mingle.
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I'm an entrepreneur, but I keep multiple revenue streams.
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I'm a solo traveler, which means I've done
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the CPA version of Eat, Pray, Love on six continents.
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Because I don't settle, what that means
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is that I also don't second guess my decisions.
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And I'm also not worried about my future
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because I'm firmly rooted in the present.
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Settling is a really sinister thing.
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It will keep you up at night,
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tossing and turning, trying to figure out why,
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and trying to answer that age old question of, is that all there is.
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Personally, I don't have time for that,
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because the only time I wanna be kept up all night long, tossing and turning,
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is when I'm in the company of a fine ass man.
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That's it.
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I wish I could tell you guys,
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I'm gonna tell you guys,
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I'm gonna tell you guys,
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I'm gonna tell you guys,
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I'm gonna tell you guys,
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I could tell you guys that I learned all these valuable lessons from Lolli and they were
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instilled in me and it was great.
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But last, I emolate Blumet in all regards.
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So I had to learn a couple of lessons from the era of bitchy bevy.
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What kind of person has 10 assistants in five years?
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Bitchy bevy, that's who?
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Not install out my career with a toxic attitude.
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So initially I was really happy to be in the fashion industry,
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you know, but then I began to compare my trajectory to others.
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And I also began to feel burned out
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because I was burdened by these personas
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that I had created that were allegedly
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gonna help me progress in my career.
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I made a couple of mistakes.
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One, I thought that being snarky was a good career move.
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It wasn't.
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I also thought I looked good in the color brown.
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I actually don't.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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In my dream montage, I wanted to get away from Bitchie Bevy.
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I wanted to get away from the color brown.
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And so in the movie version of my life,
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as soon as I quit my job, I'm a yoga guru.
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I'm extremely limber and very happy.
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Come to think of it though, guys,
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I'm actually limber and happy right now,
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but I would be lying and I believe it is against
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international law to lie during a TED talk.
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So I'm not gonna do that.
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As a matter of fact, my insecurities pop back up as late as last year.
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I was minding my business as one does.
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Perusing social media.
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And I saw people excelling in a space
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where I traditionally had a lot of success.
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So I'm looking at it and I'm like,
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what about the hell they ain't calling me for that job?
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And I have this like,
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And then I realized they didn't call me for that job
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because you always said you didn't want that job.
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You told the universe you weren't into working like that.
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You don't want a job.
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I really don't.
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I'm not into it.
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So that's why it happened.
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And what I realized is that intellectually I had grown and evolved, but emotionally,
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I was Tom Petty and I was living in Petty Coke Junction.
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I told you all that ground doesn't look good on me.
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Petty looks even worse.
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It's not my shade.
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And so what I wound up having to do was really get a grip.
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I had to assess a few things about myself,
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and I decided to do a little self-help ritual call, take a note, give a note.
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And it's easy.
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When you see someone having something that you believe you deserve, you take a note.
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You ask yourself a few questions.
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It's something that you really want.
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Perhaps that person is better suited than you are for that.
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It's the universe conspiring for you to have that.
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Really kind of try and be honest with who you are and where you're at in life.
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Once you do that, you take a deep breath and you say,
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their wins have nothing to do with my worthiness
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and then you're ready to give a note.
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You go on social media and you say, congratulations
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or my personal favorite, you pick up the phone like it's the 20th century.
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And you say, congratulations, cool dogs,
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you did that, Al, you go girl, you do all the things.
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Incidentally, you feel like a better human being.
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Because you have actually extended grace.
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You've extended grace.
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You've extended grace to someone else.
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And I believe that when you remove malice from your heart,
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not only do you feel better, you look better.
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I think you lose your crown lines and your wrinkles lessen and your age spots disappear.
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I believe it's better than Botox extending grace. I do.
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Yeah. No, but let me get back to the note, the note thing. So, one of my favorite notes is from
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Willie Shakespeare to Dine Own Self Be True. Now, we've all read self-help books in the first line of
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of defense is always be your most authentic self.
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And I believe in that.
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I believe that nobody can be you but you.
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So you might as well show up and show out.
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But he is the quandary that the bar never put forth.
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What if you don't really know who you are
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because you have suppressed your inner self?
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You've suppressed the core of you.
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You've suppressed the best parts of you
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because you took on these other identities
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and the personas and an effort to make your life better.
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Because you know, we all buy into some things
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about what we're supposed to be doing and who we're supposed to be.
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So what have you squelched that?
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Because I know I had to excavate the dig up
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little brown bevy, but the way I found it was through three questions.
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Who am I at my core?
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How am I being perceived?
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How would I like to be perceived?
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Who am I at my core?
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At my core, I'm looking to authentically connect with people.
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I don't like a cursory, you know, interaction,
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and I do not believe in networking.
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I like an authentic connection.
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I'm also curious and I'm adventurous and I'm kind, and I've got big dreams.
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How am I being perceived?
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Well, y'all know the nickname, bitchy bevy.
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So duh, but here's the problem.
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There's a lot of power in that persona,
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and I actually really enjoyed it for a time, you know?
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Because you could make a lot of money being a bitch, especially in fashion.
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But it's also incredibly lonely and isolating.
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And I didn't want to live that life anymore
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and so I decided to change my life.
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And I left all of that alone.
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I really did just change my spirit and leaving fashion obviously helped.
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And when I did that, all of a sudden,
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I let little brown bevy out to play.
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Little brown bevy.
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I love her so much.
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Louis Brown Bevy is a nerdy girl.
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And so I let my nerdy pursuits come out to play.
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I must have joined every museum or museum mile in New York City.
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I began to travel the world just to look at architecture
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I'd always dreamed of.
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I learned how to be alone without being lonely.
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My spirit shifted.
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I became a better person.
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You can ask people.
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I became a better person.
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And now I get to stand here and front of you guys
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with no bravado with nothing to prove.
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I tell you, with nothing to prove.
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I'm not trying to prove none of y'all.
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I have an open heart, and I can't even believe
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that little brown bev from 150th Street in 8th Avenue,
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from the Hamlet of Harlem, is now in the word
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winning radio and TV hosts, and author, and actress, a creative consultant.
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I would do all those things for free, but here's the thing.
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I ain't cheap and I'm definitely not free, so don't get any ideas.
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But I am here in this mama, I made it moment.
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As someone who can show up as her most bevy itself, because I've done the work.
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Yeah, my most bevy itself.
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You know that I'm gonna show up
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and I've got a pep in my high heel, red bottom step.
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I do have heaving cleavage.
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And I've got to tell it like it is approached the life
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that's always dosed with a ladle of love.
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It took me 55 years to get here.
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So Chris Rock, you're right.
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I'm a late bloomer and that's okay.
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Because I'm right on time.
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Because it gets greater later.
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Thank you.
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P-R-X.
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